Audionics have supplied two mixing consoles for Radio Afghanistan. This was part of a five year plan to rebuild the media infrastructure in Afghanistan, which has been devastated by years of fighting and was dependent on 40 year old equipment

The whole project was financed by the United Nations and the UK Department for International Foreign Development (DIFD), who appointed the BBC World Service Trust to implement their plans, which would look at radio and TV broadcasting, training, journalism and political/gender discrimination.

Audionics have supplied mixing consoles for a large proportion of the many World Service overseas bureaus, so were an ideal choice for the project, as the consoles have proved themselves to be highly reliable in hostile environments and have been specifically designed for ease of operation and maintenance by non technical staff.

The whole project was on a very tight timescale, the consoles were completed within four weeks from order and were then air freighted along with 3.5 tonnes of other technical equipment on a specially chartered plane direct to Kabul.

Design, planning and installation of the studios was undertaken by Project Engineers from BBC Technology – Professional Solutions. As a war zone, Afghanistan is classed by the BBC as a Category 1 Hostile Enviroment. This required it’s Engineers to attend a special training course before departure. The training course concentrates on awareness and avoidance of potentially dangerous situations, First Aid and self treatment strategies, and general survival techniques in the event of hostage capture or vehicle breakdown.

The British Ambassador performed the official hand-over ceremony at Radio Kabul, just 9 days after work commenced on the studios.